Hey, Depp Cult: It’s over, and you got nothing that you wanted.
The appeal is settled. That means Depp’s case is dismissed with prejudice and he signed a settlement in which Amber Heard denied liability. After spending 26 million dollars on lawsuits in two countries, all Depp has to show for it is a twice-upheld ruling that he’s a wife-beater and also a piece of paper that says seven idiots agreed with him. He can wipe his ass with that or roll a blunt, it’s his choice.
Amber is free. He can’t relitigate their relationship anymore. She has no gag order, no injunction, no NDA. She did not accept guilt. On Instagram today, she stated that the UK court found she had been subjected to domestic and sexual violence, and he can’t touch her for saying that. He’s toothless.
She’s not paying a cent; her insurance is. Depp spent 26 million and got one million back. What a deal.
Oh, and her countersuit still stands. He still owes her two million. So let’s take a tally: Judge granted Heard a restraining order, UK judgment (upheld twice on appeal) found Depp was a wife-beater and rapist, VA jury found that Depp defamed Heard through Waldman, and now Depp’s verdict against her no longer matters and isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. That’s Amber: 4, Depp: 0.
Depp will never have a career resurgence, because in his own words, he’s “never getting clean and sober.” Big studios won’t touch him. He’s out of Pirates. He’s out of Fantastic Beasts. He’s already ruining his reputation in the European indie scene with his horrible behavior on set. His music is shit. He looks like his liver is trying to claw its way free of his body.
Meanwhile, Amber’s still Mera in Aquaman. She has about as much screen time in the sequel as she did in the original. She has another film, In the Fire, coming out in 2023. She’s free to resume her activism work. And one day she’ll write a tell-all book and be the star of multiple documentaries about how she was vilified and wronged, and maybe you remoras will feature in those documentaries, dressed as poop or giggling over a victim describing her rape.
(Don’t forget, the Internet is forever! One day your kids will see that, and then they’ll go no contact.)
And let’s not forget that now, thanks to your efforts to unseal court documents, the whole world knows that Depp’s dick doesn’t work.
One night I started the group by asking the men what they thought the benefits were of their violence. At first they all looked at each other (notably) and said, âThere are no benefits.â This did not surprise me, as men who batter routinely deny their actionsâas they deny their intents as well. So I said, âWell, there must be some benefits from the violence; otherwise why would you do it?â They looked at each other again and then one guy started admitting there were benefits, and then they all chimed in until the four-by-eight-foot blackboard I was writing their responses on was full.
Here is a list of the benefits they cited (until we ran out of space):
Sheâs scared and wonât go out and spend money
Get your way: go out
Respect
She wonât argue
Feeling superior: sheâs accountable to me in terms of being somewhere on time: I decide
Keeps relationship goingâsheâs too scared to leave
Get the money
Get sex
Total control in decision making
Use money for drugs
Donât have to change for her
Power
Decide where to go (as a couple)
Who to see
What to wear
Control the children
If sheâs late, she wonât be again
Intimidation
Sheâs scared & canât confront me
Can convince her sheâs screwinâ up
She feels less worthy so defers to my needs and wants
She will look up to me and accept my decisions without an argument
Decide her social lifeâwhat she wears so you can keep your image by how she acts
Sheâs to blame for the battering
Sheâs an object
(I get) a robot babysitter, maid, sex, food
Ego booster
She tells me Iâm great
Bragging rights
If she worksâget her money
Get her to quit job so she can take care of house
Isolate her so friends canât confront me
Decide how money is spent
âIâm breadwinnerâ
Buy the toys I want
Take time for myself
She has to depend on me if I break her stuff
I get to know everything
Sheâs a nurse-maid
She comforts me
Supper on the table
Invite friends over w/o her knowinâ = more work for her
No compromise = more freedom
Donât have to listen to her complaints for not letting her know stuff
She works for me
I donât have to help out
I donât have to hang out with her or kids
Determine what values kids haveâwho they play with, what school they go to or getting to ignore the processâdictating what they âneedâ food, clothes, recreation, etc.
Dictate reality, etc.
Kids on my side against her
Kids do what I say
Mold kids/her so that they will help do what I should do
Keeps kids quiet about abuse
Donât have to get up, take out garbage, watch kids, do dishes, get up at night with kids, do laundry, change diapers, clean house, bring kids to appointments or activities, mop floors, clean refrigerator, etc.
Answer to nobody
Do what you want, when you want to
Get to ignore/deny your history of violence and other irresponsible behavior
Get to write history
Get to determine future
Choose battles & what it will cost her
Proves your superiority
Win all the arguments
Donât have to listen to her wishes, complaints, anger, fears, etc.
Make the rules then break them when you want
So she wonât get help against you for past beatings because she has no friends to support her and she is confused by my lies
Convince her sheâs nuts
Convince her sheâs unattractive
Convince her sheâs to blame
Convince her sheâs the problem
I can dump on her
Can use kids to âspyâ on mom
Kids wonât tell mom what I did
Kids wonât disagree with me
Donât have to talk to her
Iâm king of the castle
Can make yourself scarce
Have someone to unload on
Have someone to bitch at
She wonât call police
Tell kids donât have to listen to mom
Get her to drop charges
Get her to support me to her family, my family, cops, judge, SCIP, prosecutors, etc.
Get her to admit itâs her fault
The first time I did this exercise I looked at the blackboard and I thought, âOh my God. Why would they give it up?â I then decided to ask the men: Why give it up? They then filled a two-by-two foot space on the blackboard with things like, âget arrested,â âdivorce,â âget protection orders taken out against you,â âadult kids donât invite you to their weddings,â âhave to go to groups like this.â That was about it.
This was the first time I fully comprehended the necessity of a consistent coordinated community response through the criminal, civil, and family court systems which can mete out safe and effective interventions that hold men who batter accountable while preserving the safety of the women, girls, and boys they abuse. It was on that day that I realized if I had to choose between providing batterer groups for men who batter or a consistently effective criminal and civil/family court response to domestic violence, I would choose the criminal and civil/family court response every time. There are just too many benefits gained from this behavior.
Meiji period fashion was some of the best in the world, speaking purely from an aesthetic standpoint you can really see the collision of European and Japanese standards of beauty and how their broad agreement even in particulars (the similarity between Japanese and Gibson girl bouffants, the obi vs the corset, the obi knot vs the bustle, the mutual covetousness for exotic textiles, the feverish swapping of both art styles and subjects) combined and produced some of the most interesting cultural exchange we have this level of documentation for. Europeans were wearing kimono or adapting them into tea gowns, japanese were pairing lacy Edwardian blouses with skirt hakama and little button up boots. haori jackets with bowler hats and European style lapels. if steampunk was any good as an aesthetic it would steal wholesale from the copious records we have in both graphic arts and photography of how people were dressing in this milieu.
«The botany professor,» from Kkokei Shimbun, October 20, 1908. sheâs wearing a kimono blouse or haori, edwardian skirt or hakama, gibson girl bouffant, a lacy high-collar blouse with cravat and brooch, and a pocket watch with chain
1910-1930 (TaishĆ era, right after Meiji, which I should have included in my OP) menâs haori with western lapels
I have a love for both kimonos and bustle dresses, so I love seeing how the two fashions influenced each other over this period. And thanks to Pinterest, I have pictures!
Victorian tea gown that clearly started as a kimono. It still has the long furisode sleeves, but now theyâre gathered at the shoulder and turned around so that the long open side is facing the front instead of the back. Similarly the back is taken in with curved seams to fit the torso and pleated below that for the skirt.
Woodblock of a woman in a a bustle dress made with colorful patterned fabrics and examples of how a woman could style her hair with it.
More prints to showcase hairstyles, two women wearing western wear and two women wearing kimonos.
This next oneâs modern, but it involves hoopskirts so Iâll add it in because it makes me so happy. Thereâs been different styles of wedding fashion that take kimonos and give them a more modern look. Often this involves taking a kimono and then cutting and resewing it into a new dress. Very pretty, but it canât ever be worn like a traditional kimono again. But now thereâs another trend where the bride wears a hoopskirt with a white skirt, then you take the kimono and drape it on. The back of the kimono covers the front of the dress, the long sleeves fall across the sides or the back, and you still wear an obi with it. The result is pretty and the kimono itself doesnât have to be altered at all.
And because you mentioned steampunk, I have to add in these two:
Personally Iâm a big fan of Taisho Meisen kimono, which are what happen when the Japanese textile industry abruptly gets access to aniline dyes, new spinning and weaving technology, and the concept of Art Deco:
Earlier this evening, at around 7 PM CT U.S., Rebekah Jones (notably one of DeSantisâ biggest political enemies right now) underwent a raid on her home by state police.
Guns were pointed in the face of her 13-year old son, Jack. They arrested him under the charges of digital terrorism and âon state orders.â
They are refusing to let him go home and they are refusing to let Jones see him.
These are her screenshots recounting the incident from earlier tonight. They were taken at 10:23 PM CT U.S.
Reblog. I donât care who you are, reblog this. We have to make sure that this doesnât get buried â itâs already happening.
An update by her. Sheâs the COVID-19 whistleblower in FL. The scientist that pointed out that FL was covering the real number of cases
De Wallen, the infamous red light district in Amsterdam, Holland, is under threat. Many of its window brothels, in which women are displayed like carcasses for the entertainment of sex tourists, are closing down. Most legal street prostitution zones across the country have closed, and soon they will all cease operation.
A number of politicians and law enforcers are now accepting that
legalised prostitution has been an unmitigated disaster. There is
currently a proposed law being considered by the Dutch Senate which, if
passed, would result in punters being criminalised if they pay for sex
with a trafficked, pimped or otherwise coerced woman.
These changes are the result of a vibrant sex trade abolitionist movement emerging in Holland.
The Dutch legalised their brothel industry in the year 2000. The
government promised that this would result in safety for the women, and
an end to trafficking. It claimed that everything would be above board,
safe and clean. The opposite happened. Sex tourism is now a major
industry, with British men being one group of Europeans visiting the
city to pay for sex. A number of punters I have interviewed told me that
they wouldn’t have dreamt of using prostituted women back home, but
that being in Holland gave them permission to do it.
The illegal and unlicensed sex trade has boomed under
legalisation, trafficking of women has risen dramatically, demand is on
the rise and the women are certainly no safer than they were when
pimping was illegal.
I have been visiting Holland over the course of 15 years, researching
the consequences of legalisation.I have interviewed sex buyers
(including one who told me he first paid for sex when he was 12 years
old), women in brothels, pimps and pro-legalisation lobbyists that make a
profit off the backs of prostituted women.
Xaviera Hollander is a big part of the propaganda machine that
promotes the notion that prostituted women under legalisation are having
a great time. Hollander is known for her memoir, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story,
which sold by the millions. I visited her at her home in Amsterdam, to
ask if she thinks the women are happy under legalisation. She admits to
me that trafficking is on the rise, and that legalisation is far from
effective in removing criminality from the sex trade. Coming from a
former pimp, this is quite something.
There are large numbers of tour guides offering tours around
Amsterdam’s red light areas. I took one of these tours last year, and
was told that legalisation is a perfect model, that the women are safe
and happy and the public accept the window brothels as part of the
architecture. I asked the guide where he got his information from, and
he told me that the Prostitution Information Centre (PIC)
provide, for a fee, information for all of the tour companies. The PIC
is run as a business by women who claim to be “sex workers”. In fact
they appear to be nothing of the kind, being a company charging for this
advice and therefore profiting from prostitution.
What once looked like a revolutionary approach to prostitution is now
clearly seen as a disaster, by all except those who seek to make a
profit from prostitution.
Jolanda Boer is a senior public prosecutor specialising in human
trafficking. Over the past decade Boer has dealt with more than 100 such
cases in Amsterdam. “There have been cases where the girl has been
raped by their pimps and threatened into working behind the windows. The
women are not in a position to freely tell people when something is
going wrong. But of course they’re smiling because if you don’t you’re
not going to get a client,” says Boer.
On Saturday I spoke to a packed room about my book
on the global sex trade. The event was held in the red light district,
in a building that had previously been a Chinese massage parlour
offering “happy endings”. I had expected some kind of protest, or
infiltration by the pro-prostitution lobby. But every person in the room
was there because they recognised that prostitution is a human rights
abuse, harmful to the women involved, and that legalisation has been
disastrous.
The following day I was in Den Haag, home of the Dutch parliament,
launching my book in front of dozens of concerned citizens, all of whom
have had enough of Holland being held up as a perfect model in dealing
with prostitution. After the launch, dozens of us marched along the
local red light district, holding up banners and placards with slogans
such as “Shut down the sex trade” and “Enough is enough”. It was the
first ever public demonstration against legal brothels.
The Dutch empire is crumbling. Over one-third of all window brothels
have closed, and more will soon lose their licences. A group of 10
Hungarian traffickers are currently on trial in Den Haag, and much of
the reporting of the trial links trafficking of women to the legalised
regime. There is still a long way to go, but now that feminists are
daring to speak out against the disastrous Dutch model of legalisation,
there is no going back.
